


Must Have Slipped My Mind

by Rhaiye



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Brain Injury, Friendship, Memory Loss
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-09-04
Updated: 2016-08-31
Packaged: 2017-12-25 14:08:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/954009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhaiye/pseuds/Rhaiye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is one injury that Sherlock Holmes never considered: damage to his brain. After a fall, Sherlock finds himself forgetting things... And not just anything. Everything to do with the work vanishes entirely from his brain once he's slept, as if someone is scouring the inside of his head while he sleeps. He doesn't have time to see if it will get better, though. There's a killer on the loose, and Sherlock Holmes is the only man who can stop him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Disorientation

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PaperPrince](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PaperPrince/gifts).



> This is in response to a prompt from PaperPrince.

Sherlock Holmes opens his eyes and is met with nothing by blinding light, against which he squints momentarily until he adjusts to it. He remembers. What does he remember? _Nothing at all._ No, that can’t be right, he remembers something. Yes. Water. He remembers water, and a falling sensation. A very sharp pain, darkness and then a different blinding light. John. Lestrade. Mycroft. Doctors. Darkness again. Light again, and a different sort of pain in his head, the sort of ache he associates with something healing.   
  
Ah, yes. There it is. He pushes himself up from his bed, slowly, still blinking through the light. He takes care with his various aches and pains, and none more so than the pain in his head. He remembers everything now, although he still finds it very disconcerting to be unsure of simple things such as where he is until he properly wakes up. He is aware that this is a problem that ordinary people have occasionally, the feeling of disorientation, but he has never been what one would call ordinary.  
  
He pulls the blanket from his legs and swings his feet to the floor. A rush of dizziness follows that simple movement so Sherlock remains still for the moment. His fingers rise, and tentatively touch the row of stitches nestled neatly amongst the sharp stubble on his scalp. He knows it’s healing well, but the thought of the nylon looping through his skin in little knots makes him shiver slightly. If he concentrates, he can remember stumbling, falling over the edge of the Cannon Street Railway Bridge. He can feel the jolt of panic as he hits the water, knowing beyond a doubt that it is too shallow to be safe. A sharp pain and then nothing else until much later.  
  
He’s never had to deal with an injury of this sort before. Broken bones, bullet wounds, stabbings, all of those and more. The closest he has come to an injury that has affected his brain is a minor concussion when he was fifteen. Somehow, even with his frankly amazing brain power, it has never occurred to him that he could possibly hurt himself like this. It is aggravating, and the thought puts him in a foul mood.  
  
His day has hardly begun, and already he wishes it was over.  
  
He shuffles into the kitchen where John is sitting with a cup of tea and the paper. The doctor looks up, assessing him with a sharp glance before going back to his paper. John has been trying very hard not to smother Sherlock with concern. It is a difficult thing for him to do, since that is a doctor’s calling, but he is trying nonetheless. Sherlock appreciates it, but will never say so. That isn’t the way they do things at 221B Baker Street. _(At least I can remember my address)._  
  
“How are you feeling this morning?” John asks in a very offhand tone, and takes a sip of his tea _(cold, he has been waiting for some time already)._ He doesn’t look up again, although Sherlock knows the urge to inspect him has not faded. The dark haired detective does not deign to answer, and sweeps past into the sitting room with as much dignity as he can manage. He hears John sigh, and his mouth twists slightly in a bit of a smirk. If he is in a bad mood, everyone else might as well be in one too.  
  
“Don’t give me that, Sherlock,” John says in a firm tone that Sherlock that come to recognize as his ‘doctor dealing with a difficult patient’ voice. “You don’t get to swan off and not tell me if you’re feeling alright just because you’re in a bit of a strop this morning.” The man has followed Sherlock into the sitting room, and sits on the couch beside the detective with his body angled towards his patient.  
  
Sherlock debates continuing to ignore him, but ultimately decides that John will be so much more annoying if he doesn’t receive a response. “Fine,” He acquiesces eventually. “I still have a headache, and had a bit of disorientation this morning, but I hear from a reliable source that’s to be expected.” His source had been John.  
  
“Good,” John allows, shifting on the couch so he is not focused so intensely on Sherlock. Another move in the doctor’s clear attempt to give Sherlock his space. John scoops the remote from the arm of the couch and idly flicks on the television. Daytime soap operas. Horrid little dramatic affairs. Both men watch it for a moment. “Any memory problems?” John asks, for the third time in as many days, once for each day Sherlock has been home.  
  
Sherlock feels a rush of irritation at the question, but he knows it’s because the answer has changed from a no to a yes. He closes his eyes and he knows that his silence betrays him so he gives in. “A little,” he admits. “Couldn’t quite get a grasp on things when I woke up.  
  
Thankfully though, it had been nothing like when he woke in the hospital immediately following the fall. At the time, he didn’t know where he was, he didn’t remember his name, he couldn’t remember anything at all. The only thing that had not felt utterly disorienting was when he looked at John and thought _‘safe’_. The feeling had persisted throughout the confusion that had lasted for hours, until he finally remembered _why_ John felt safe.  
  
“No trouble now, though?” His doctor questions and Sherlock rolls his eyes.  
  
“I am perfectly fine, John,” he replies in a voice that is quite bit more tart than he’d intended. The effect is what he desires, however. John sighs and changes the subject.  
  
“Greg caught the thief, by the way. Found him out in Harrow, just like you said.”  
  
Thief. Harrow. Perhaps he is not as perfectly fine as he has indicated. The words sound familiar, if he could just- Oh. Yes, of course. The man who had stolen artwork from several famous galleries, including the Saatchi and the Serpentine. The fence he was using to offload the stolen property was located in Harrow, judging from the fibre residues left from his gloves at the scene.  
  
John sighs a bit when Sherlock doesn’t bother to respond, then heads back to the kitchen to finish his paper.  
  
The detective texts Lestrade. _Bored. SH_. It isn’t long until his phone buzzes like a gnat on the floor where he has dropped it. The reach to collect it makes his head swim and throb.  
  
 _How are you feeling?_ Lestrade’s concern is much more obnoxious than John’s ever is, and Sherlock curls his lip up at the inquiry.  
  
 _I said I’m bored. Give me a case. SH.  
  
_ Another buzz. _No. Get some rest, Sherlock._  
  
For once, Sherlock listens and goes back to bed. He feels quite wretched. He misses the appraising look John gives him as he passes.  
  
So it goes. Sherlock sleeps, gripes at John, texts Lestrade to no avail, and reluctantly puts up with Mrs. Hudson’s mothering attitude (which, Sherlock thinks to himself on more than one occasion, is only one letter away from smothering).  
  
Every day, once a day, when Sherlock first rises and shakes off his disorientation, he enters the kitchen to John asking him how he is. The doctor refrains from asking more than once a day, and Sherlock always tells him he is fine. He is not. He knows that the disorientation is getting worse. He chalks it up to the unending boredom, and convinces himself it will go away once he has something to do. If only Lestrade would give him a case.

He decides one day, about three weeks after his tumble off the bridge that it is time, everyone who says differently be damned. He rises, showers and dresses in black trousers and his sharpest looking shirt. He looks at himself in the mirror. He rarely does this. He has very little time for mirrors and the reflections they send back at him of his sharp featured face. Today is no different. The mirror shows him that he is looking slightly gaunt. He looks tired, unhappy, but the thing that strikes him most is that for a split second, he looks unfamiliar. It’s as if he is surprised to see himself.  
  
The stubble on his head is growing in, but it will be a very long time before his hair is back to a length that he finds acceptable. He hates the way he looks as if he’s just gotten a fresh buzz cut, as if he’s just enlisted in the military. He wonders idly if John would consent to showing him a picture from his early military days. He suspects John would look quite endearing with a buzzcut.  
  
He is finished with the mirror. He will not look at it again for some time. He enters the kitchen, much as he does each morning. Just as each morning, John is reading the paper with a cup of tea.  
  
“How are you this morning, Sherlock?” John says, glancing up at him. He raises one eyebrow at the fact that Sherlock is wearing proper clothes for the first time in more than a fortnight.  
  
Sherlock knows that John isn’t stupid. He’s a very good doctor, and good doctors tend to know when their patients are lying to them. This doesn’t stop the detective from telling his daily lie. “Fine.”  
  
“Going out today?” John asks, flipping to the next page of the paper.  
  
“Yes, John,” Sherlock says as firmly as he can. “I’m going to go down to Scotland Yard. Lestrade will find a case for me, or I’ll spend my day there just _talking_ to people that pass by.” By talking, he does of course, mean deducing every scrap of potentially embarrassing information about them as he possibly can. Lestrade will give him a case to work on just to get him out of there. He wouldn’t normally rely on his skills of deduction for such frivolous things, but he is _just so bored.  
  
_ At this, John folds his paper and puts it on the table beside his empty tea cup. “I shudder to think.” He answers in a mild tone, pushing his chair back with a scrape to stand up. “I’ll join you, if you don’t mind. I fancy getting out for a bit.”  
  
Sherlock nods his assent silently, sweeping into the living room and donning his Belstaff coat and customary blue scarf. John has a variety of reasons to accompany him, only one of which is getting out of the flat, but Sherlock always prefers that the doctor joins him.  
  
A half hour later, he passes through the familiar halls of Scotland Yard only to be stopped by Sergeant Donovan in the hall. “What are you doing here?” She asks tartly, her brown eyes narrowing at him.  
  
He knows that the only reason she dislikes him as much as she does is the way that he treats her. She’s not a complete idiot, but he can’t help it. She gets more and more acerbic the longer they converse and it always amuses him. The label ‘freak’ isn’t so amusing, but he will never admit it. “Bored,” He says simply before brushing past her into Lestrade’s office.  
  
“Aww, no!” Lestrade groans as soon as he catches sight of Sherlock. “You’re supposed to be healing up, aren’t you?” John steps into the room behind the consulting detective. “You’re letting him run around London, John?”  
  
John shrugs his right shoulder, his good shoulder in a gesture that reads as _what are you gonna do?  
  
_ “John doesn’t _let_ me do anything, thank you very much, Detective Inspector,” Sherlock inserts stiffly. He heavily resents the implications that the only reason he has left the flat is because John has allowed him to do so. “In fact, what I will and will not do is none of his business, nor yours.”  
  
Greg looks at John in consternation, and John simply shrugs his good shoulder again, which infuriates Sherlock even more. He sucks a slow breath through his nose, taking a moment to control his temper. Having a row with either of the men in the room wouldn’t get him what he wants.  
  
“Sorry,” Greg says as if it’s some sort of peace offering, which Sherlock supposes (for most people) it is.  
  
“He’s here looking for a case,” John says breaking the silence that Sherlock is leaving in the wake of Lestrade’s apology. “Have you got anything on he could take a look at? “  
  
“Might do.” Lestrade answers, and waves vaguely at the chairs that are haphazardly pushed in against the front of his desk. He flips through several file folders that are stacked on his ever-untidy desk before selecting one that is green manila. “Why don’t you take a peek at this one?” He passes the folder to Sherlock who sprawls in one of the chairs before taking it.  
  
Sherlock takes a cursory glance through the folder before sliding it back onto Lestrade’s desk. “Boring,” he announces. “The woman’s killer is her hairdresser, but it was an accident. The killing, of course, not the hiding of the body. Next.”  
  
Lestrade’s eyes flutter closed momentarily and Sherlock knows that he is holding back a question of how, how Sherlock knows about the hairdresser so quickly, so the younger man relents as a reward for Lestrade’s will power. It’s a bit funny how soothing this is for his brain. “She’s obviously recently dyed her hair, in fact, she dyes her hair often. So often that she’s managed to develop a severe allergic reaction to a chemical that resides in most permanent hair dyes called p-phenylenediamine, which Molly’s autopsy found evidence of. She went into anaphylactic shock, and died in the-” He breaks off, leaning forward. The folder opens again with one flip of a finger and he finds the pertinent information just to be sure - traces of a common disinfectant on her left arm, and the left side of her face. “Bathroom, judging by the chemical residue that remained on the side of her body that hit the bathroom floor when she fell. Hairdresser panicked, tried to dump the body in the alleyway rather than calling for an ambulance. Stupid.”  
  
As always after being rather brilliant like that, he glances at John from the corner of his eye to see if the doctor is impressed. He’s always impressed and Sherlock always hates himself for checking.  
  
“Right,” Lestrade mutters, beginning to shuffle through the rest of the files on his desk, scrubbing at his hair slightly in bemusement. He extracts another manila folder, and shoves it brusquely across the desk. “Try that one.”  
  
Again, Sherlock flips through it at top speed, and nods in approval. “This will do for now,” he tells the DI, and climbs to his feet. A slight rush of dizziness catches him off guard, and his fingers skim the top of Lestrade’s desk just enough to get his bearings.  
  
He knows that Lestrade has noticed nothing and that John has noticed too much, so he refuses to look at the doctor as he sweeps out of the room and away to Baker Street.  
  
A day goes by. Sherlock works on the case almost as if he’d never been injured, not sleeping or eating until John forces him to do both. Having a doctor as a flatmate, a friend, is simultaneously convenient and aggravating. He drifts to sleep with difficulty, his head swimming with the details of the case, what he’s worked out and what has yet to come to light.  
  
\----  
  
“So?” John asks expectantly the next day, as he makes them both a cup of tea.  
  
Sherlock ignores him. It aggravates him when the doctor does this, asks stupid non-questions that have no context whatsoever. He doesn’t know what John is asking him about. It could be any number of things. The man is predictable as well: he will repeat his question in the form of a proper query soon enough.  
  
“Any headway?” The doctor inquires as he enters the living room after a few moments of silence. An imperious wave redirects the cup of tea from Sherlock’s hands to the coffee table until John is finally seated in his armchair.

“On what?” Sherlock finally asks and draws his knees up to his chest, irritated at having to request clarity.  
  
John furrows his brow for a moment as he looks at the younger man, cocking his head to the side slightly. “The case, Sherlock,” he responds, his confusion evident in his voice as well as being plastered all over his face.  
  
“Of course,” Sherlock replies as condescendingly as he can, because he knows this is what John expects to hear. Reality, though, is not as predictable as his steadfast doctor, as Sherlock is suddenly understanding acutely.  
  
 _What case?_ He… can’t remember. He knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that he had one, now that John has reminded him. They went to Lestrade’s office at Scotland Yard. He solved a case just sitting there, the killer was… He can’t remember that either. Lestrade gave him another, he can see the folder on the coffee table, but he can’t recall what the case was, the details, any progress he’d made. He certainly had made progress, he remembers that, but otherwise… _nothing._  
  
He sucks a sharp breath in at the realization and John glances over at him. Sherlock doesn’t know what his expression looks like, but whatever the doctor sees causes him to rise from his armchair and cross the room in a single stride, knocking his cup over in the process. He crouches in front of the detective, one hand resting lightly on Sherlock’s knee. His tea lays abandoned, soaking into the rug, and for whatever reason, that is what Sherlock focuses on when John asks him what’s wrong.  
  
Sherlock can’t think, he can’t… think, and so he doesn't think to lie. He finally turns his gaze to John’s eyes and asks him what he knows is probably a damning question. “Which case is that?”


	2. "The Incident"

John has a contact in the neurological department at St. Bart’s, and trades in a favour to get Sherlock the tests he needs within a few hours of what Sherlock is now mentally referring to as ‘the incident’. He refuses to give it more shape than that.

The MRI shows nothing. Sherlock scrutinizes John’s face, the crinkled lines beside his eyes, the thoughtful set of his mouth. The detective can say so very much about the human brain, especially a dead one, but he can’t decipher the grainy, grayscale image. It looks like clay, shaped roughly into a brain. It’s nothing like the way he has seen brains before, under a scalpel. It makes no sense and he hates not understanding more than anything.

So he stops looking at it. He studies John, the way John studies the image. Perhaps if he stares long enough, hard enough, John will shape himself into clay, a rough approximation of himself. A self-fulfilling prophecy, if there ever was one. He is getting so very little information from John’s face.

He is thinking nonsense, born of… well, panic, if he is truthful with himself, but he is Sherlock Holmes. He does not panic.

He watches John. John watches the image. The neurologist, Dr. Higson, watches them both studiously ignore what they don’t want to look at. Dr. Higson’s mouth is moving, but he is so boring. Sherlock doesn’t listen, tunes himself out until much later when he has changed out of the uncomfortable hospital gown and they are leaving the building through the same door they arrived in. 

“You didn’t listen to a word he said, did you?” John asks in a conversational tone, as he climbs into a taxi. 

“No,” Sherlock confirms, angling himself into the back seat beside the doctor.

“Baker Street,” John tells the cab driver before turning back to Sherlock. “Why would you listen? It’s only your head, your mind. No sense in listening to a qualified expert on the matter.” The doctor’s brows is furrowed downwards. 

Sherlock looks out the window, streets and houses rushing by, but he sees none of it. “I didn’t care for his opinion.” 

“No!” John says, too loudly. The cabbie flicks a momentary glance in his rearview mirror at the small explosion, and Sherlock resents the intrusion. “Too busy staring at me, then, yeah? Figured that was the best way to get the information? My facial expressions?”

Silence. Sherlock refuses to respond to such nonsense. It’s all true, but still, he’d prefer to think of it as nonsense. 

The silence lengthens until John finally breaks it. As always. “So? Tell me what I think of the results, then.”

Sherlock sniffs slightly, to show his disdain, but relents. “You had very little reaction either way, which leads me to believe nothing conclusive was proven.”

“Well, you’re right.” John tells him, shifting in his seat, cloth moving on cloth. “It’s not bad. At least, not terrible. He suspects it might be a form of transient global amnesia, but coupled with your head trauma, nothing’s for sure. The best we can do is wait and hope it resolves itself.”

The consulting detective hums in the back of his throat for a moment, knowing it sounds more like a soft growl. He says nothing. There is nothing left to say. 

He doesn’t speak again until hours later.


	3. Hateful

He is sulking, and he knows it. Wrapped tightly in his dressing gown, burrowed into the couch, back to the room. Not an uncommon position for him, but he is so very self-pitying that he is quite literally annoying himself. So he stops.   
  
John is out… somewhere. Wherever, it doesn’t really matter ( _ it does matter, I want him here, I want him gone, I don’t know what I want).  _ Sherlock spreads the case files out in front of him once again, for the fourth time in as many days, and begins again. Again. He doesn’t think he’s ever had to relearn  _ anything, ever _ .    
  
John’s neurologist friend is ( _ unsurprisingly)  _ stumped, of course. He’s never seen anything like the amnesia Sherlock is displaying, and it’s apparently really quite remarkable.Sherlock’s  memory loss is, legitimately, only to do with the cases that keep him sane, keep him thinking, keep him active  _ (keep him alive) _ . He reads, deducts, solves, and the moment his mind drifts to sleep, everything he has accomplished drains from his head like water from a sieve.    
  
In a perverse twist, this time it’s been John conducting the experiments. Reading Sherlock snippets of books, playing different music, asking him questions and so on. Then, after Sherlock sleeps, asking him series of testing questions regarding it all. He remembers everything with clarity except for the work, and he is angrier and more frustrated than he has ever been in his life.    
  
His first instinct is to simply stay awake until the case is solved. He’s done so in the past, gone days and days without sleep, and would do so again in a heartbeat. But. Of course, but. There’s a but that is plaguing him and haunting him and making him want to pull his hair out (had he long enough hair to pull, that is, as his head is still rough and stubbly around his stitches). But he is  _ so. tired.  _  The head injury, of course. Healing a body takes a surprising amount of energy, and unfortunately in this case, Sherlock is not exceptional. He is finding that his body is betraying him in so many ways lately, and he can’t tolerate it.    
  
Yet he still pushes. Feels that if he just pushes and pulls and worries at the problem it will rectify itself, because he just can’t stand it, not even for one more second. A lesser person would have broken something in their outrage, their frustration, their pain, by now, but he is not like that. Not so pedestrian. Besides, nothing he could break could possibly be large enough, grand enough, satisfying enough, in his opinion. If he could blow up the entire  _ world _ , perhaps that would be enough  _ (wishful thinking) _ .   
  
So instead he forces his way through papers, and photos, and maps, all things that he knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that he has looked at already, and yet can remember nothing of. Victim, male, 27 years old, strangled and dropped into the Thames. Fished out near Henley Bridge, not yet identified. No missing persons reports match, most of what would have been helpful evidence has been washed away. John has made notes for Sherlock, and taken pictures, at the scene, at Bart’s, at Scotland Yard, here at the flat. Nothing helps. He has to reexamine everything, learn everything he has already learned about the case, again.    
  
After what seems like an eternity of staring at the same pages, wishing this wasn’t happening, he gathers all the papers, photos, and notes into a single neat pile and taps the edge gently to make them even. With that task completed, he flings them across the room in one violent motion, and flops back down onto the couch. 

  
He hates this so much. He hates not remembering. He hates not understanding. He hates feeling so frustrated. To be fair, he spends a lot of time feeling frustrated, but it’s different this time. This time he is frustrated with himself. With his own brain. And his frustration is heavily tainted with sadness, which is another irritant. Sadness. What a useless emotion. He tamps down on it as hard as he can.    
  
“Sherlock?” John’s voice comes from the doorway, as the doctor’s key clicks in the lock.    
  
Sherlock says nothing, does nothing. Let John get upset about the mess, let John putter around the flat watching telly, making tea, let John be abominably  _ normal _ while Sherlock swirls apart within the confines of his own head.    
  
“Hey, Sherlock, I’ve brought some food, if you want.” John tells him, setting a take away container on the coffee table. He’ll likely never give up trying to get the detective to eat. The shorter man bustles away to the kitchen to do…  _ whatever.  _  He’s back, and Sherlock almost feels glad. Instead, he casts that emotion away with the sadness. He hates it all, and it all certainly seems to hate him too.    
  
He is being insufferable, and he knows it, and he doesn’t care. 


End file.
